Is it possible to achieve smooth scrolling on LCD monitor?

[MikeNZ]

Hi guys.
Would love some advice for best GroovyMame settings using an LCD monitor.
Is it actually possible to achieve smooth scrolling on all games with an LCD?

I'm setting up my first Barcade unit.

I have a DELL 17" 1708 LCD monitor.

Using the following settings in mame.ini

monitor lcd
orientation vertical (monitor turned vertical in bartop)
resolution 1280:1024

video ddraw (for low lag)

powerstrip 1(have powerstrip installed)

According to my monitor specs, it has a freq range of 56-76 hz.
When I use the setting "lcd_range 56.00-76.00" the screen goes berzerk with displaced chopped up imaging.

Is there anything I've missed?

I'm able to achieve silky smooth scrolling on some games such as Flicky, Wonder Boy etc. but can't get the same smoothness on games such as Flying Shark and Pac Land etc.
I'm guessing it's because those games run at an exact 60hz and my monitor isn't really able to achieve other frequencies for the other games?


Any advice would be appreciated.

[adder]

...has a freq range of 56-76 hz...

I don't think that is quite right, I would expect your monitor has a number of 'locked' refresh rates
however you can run all the games smoothly, there are (I think) a number of ways to do that afaik (I use crt monitors so I am not very experienced with lcd). one way to do it is (if it doesn't bother you), you could force every mame game to run at 60hz (so each game would be either sped up or slowed down to equal 60hz), this often is not something which is very noticeable as you will find most games in mame are quite close to 60hz anyway.
there might be other ways to fix your issue, hopefully someone else with better knowledge of using lcd will come along to help

[bulbousbeard]

Yes. It's called G-Sync.

[Calamity]

I don't think that is quite right, I would expect your monitor has a number of 'locked' refresh rates

That's probably the case. To find it out it's better to use Arcade OSD once you set a modified refresh through Powerstrip, then press 'measure vfreq' and check if the refresh is smooth for the different values. If it's only smooth for values around 60, then the monitor is converting any input signal to 60 Hz. Most 'recent' monitors do this, unfortunately. Some are capable of showing several discrete values, like 57 and 60, and convert everything else.

Anyway, I'd be good to know what card is being used and if it's fully supported by Powerstrip.

You can force syncrefresh for all games by selecting a very high value for the -syncrefresh_tolerance option, such as 10.0. By doing that all games will run smooth but at the wrong speed.

[MikeNZ]

Thanks Calamity.
I'll probably leave things as they are for now.

Everything else seems to be working ok.

I have an ATI 4000 series card so I'm putting it down to the monitor that's incapable of the extra refreash settings.
Will leave lcd_range as "auto" for now and put up with the jerky scrolling on some games for now.